Article by Elizabeth Asiimwe, with input from Richard Miiro, Beatrice Luzobe and Ambrose Owoesigire

Photo: E.Asiimwe

The 4th AFAAS Africa-Wide Agricultural Extension Week (AAEW) will be held in Abidjan (Cote d’Ivoire) with a focus on building synergies between Public and Private Sector Agricultural Extension and Advisory Services (AEAS) for Sustainable Agricultural Development in Africa. The event will be embedded in the Agricultural and Animal Resources Fair (SARA).

As the planting season begins in many regions in Uganda, farmers anticipate challenges like Fall Armyworm which has continued to affect the production of crops like Maize. This has both direct and indirect impacts on the nutrition security of households. Watch this https://youtu.be/JlFOZAj3iT8 video on the best practices to tackle Fall Armyworm.

The 1st Uganda National Agricultural Extension Symposium was successfully held at Hotel Africana, Kampala – Uganda. The symposium was held from 13 – 15 March 2018 under the theme” Enhancing Capacity and Quality Promoting Gender Responsive, Nutrition Sensitive and Professional AEAS in Uganda “.

The INGENAES project and UFAAS together are hosting the Regional Symposium March 13 - 15, 2018, in Kampala, to bring together extension stakeholders to discuss and deliberate on promoting gender and nutrition sensitive agricultural extension. The symposium will:

Explore and showcase successes, challenges, lessons learned

Reinforce learnings on specific strategies and methods

Strengthen the extension gender and nutrition community of practice in Uganda

Deadline February 15th, 2018

The Gender & Nutrition within Extension success story competition aims to capture real-life case studies of stakeholders in Uganda who are strengthening Agricultural Extension & Advisory Services by integrating gender and nutrition approaches, leading to improved livelihoods for smallholder farmers. This is not a traditional success story competition!

We want to hear;

The Durban Declaration is an appeal to action launched by 700 delegates gathered in Durban, South Africa from 30th October to 3rd November, 2017 to deliberate in the Third AFAAS Africa Agricultural Extension Week 2017 (AAEW 2017) on the theme “Scaling Up Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA): Integrating Youth, Women and the Digital Revolution”. This Declaration points out the importance of attracting youth into agriculture and related fields as well as into Agricultural Extension as a profession in order to create jobs and decent employment for over 100

The Uganda Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (UFAAS), a country chapter of AFAAS, has partnered with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) to implement the INGENAES Project, which stands for, 'Integrating Gender and Nutrition within Agricultural Advisory Services'. INGENAES is sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under the 'Feed the Future' programme, and strives “to increase agricultural production and the incomes of both men and women in rural areas who rely on agriculture for their livelihoods”.

During the Africa Wide Extension Week, 2017, in Durban, South Africa, AFAAS and UFAAS team participated in visiting Karkloof farm located in uMngeni municipality. Britt and Rene Stubbs bought the farm in 1986 for beef and maize production. He decided to develop the farm into a dairy farm. Maize, soybeans, potatoes and carrots were planted using conventional cultivation methods. The total size of the farm is 790ha and situated in an area with an average rainfall of 1150mm/year.